MY BROTHER'S KEEPER

An ex-cop tries to help out an ex-girlfriend.

Franny was the one who got away. Lou Klein chased her, but she preferred other men, marrying several times and winding up with Brian Haggerty, owner of a strip club, who likes to bed and brutalize his staff. Now, according to Franny’s brother Jimmy, a cop who grew up with Lou and worked with him on the Philadelphia police force before a righteous blow turned bad, forcing Lou out of the department to set up as a private eye, Franny needs help separating from Brian. But leaving is complicated because a few years back there was some nasty business about Brian’s first wife being in bed with his father, then being murdered—a time when Brian’s acquittal depended on the alibi Franny gave him. Franny insists that she doesn’t need help, but it doesn’t seem that way when Jimmy, trying to get her ring back from Brian, winds up dead on Lou’s porch, then Franny is stabbed herself. With some assistance from his p.i. partner Joey and caveats from his daughter Maggie, Lou finds himself reopening the case of the first wife’s murder and uncovering affairs galore, a paternity coverup and a surprising participant in that bedroom assault.

Some grisly bits and overwrought descriptions fail to juice a pedestrian plot lacking the power of Father’s Day (2009).